 You're going to hear from a diverse array of speakers from the housing fields, homelessness fields, disability fields, civil rights fields, to talk about the pending crisis that we have this Friday when the adverse weather program ends in the state of Vermont and moves from seasonal to night to night. First I'd like to start by saying that this is not a crisis that happened because of some natural catastrophe. This is a manufactured political crisis created by the failure of our governor to sign the Budget Adjustment Act on time and to give proper notice to folks in the Hotel Motel program. So just set the stage right now with what we're looking at. So this Friday the adverse weather program for the state of Vermont goes from seasonal to night to night. As part of the Budget Adjustment Act passed by both the House and the Senate and sent it to the governor, they created criteria to ensure that folks who met the general assistance for adverse weather, I mean for vulnerable or for catastrophic categories could remain housed through the remainder of this fiscal year through June 30th. They also, in addition to folks who qualify with the disability under SSI and SSDI, enable the use of a variance waiver that allows the majority of folks who are currently housed under the program to remain housed through June 30th. Unfortunately the administration has left to the last minute again getting these materials out and they've actually sent out materials to the hotels and motels informing them that because the BAA hasn't been signed by the governor that we are operating under existing rules because of that up to 458 households need to prepare to be exited by this Friday since become unhoused this Friday. In response to that, the governor has said that they're going to set up quote unquote emergency shelters in four cities in Vermont. We've heard that those will be congregate shelters. They will be nightly, so 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. or something along those lines. They will not be permanent capacity. They will be caught and they're going to last for 7 to 10 days. And so again this is manufactured. We have an existing system in place. We have hotels and motels in place. But instead of utilizing that, we're going to start pushing people out and create this crisis. I'll pass it off to Brenda to talk about some more details. Good afternoon. I'm Brenda Siegel, the executive director of unhomelessness Vermont. And I'm also representing Housing First Vermont today. In our work at unhomelessness Vermont, we support people in accessing and maintaining vouchers through the emergency housing hotel and motel program. We help them through other emergencies and we have a specialty in supporting people living with disabilities in maintaining their vouchers. We also offer support for individuals who want to learn how to advocate for themselves or tell their own story. In the last three years, every time that there's a change of the rules or procedures for emergency housing, unhomelessness Vermont supports people in answering a hotline going to hotels and explaining the changes in the program. It is always chaotic and disorganized. It always lacks humanity. Frankly, I have never thought that I could see people treated in a worse manner in this program than this administration has treated them and then I have over the years as each change is implemented without being trauma informed and without dignity. But this time, this time takes the cake. Over the last three weeks, there has been almost zero communication with people in the hotels. What little communication folks have received has been through hotel owners. People are renewed without being notified. They have not been notified about the new law. When they call and reference a legislation, economic service workers often tell them that they are not correct, that there is no such legislation. Why? Because economic service workers are also not being thoroughly briefed on the legislation. The other communication they have gotten has been has gotten has been from us, from myself and other legislators and legislators who have gone to the hotels to brief people on the new legislation, support them in understanding that they cannot renew yet and understanding that they have to have a disability variance form filled out if they don't meet regular GA qualifications and they do have a disability. On Tuesday, the administration sent out a letter to all people in adverse weather telling them to prepare to leave on Friday, giving them false despair. And it is false despair because one of three things will happen to the budget adjustment. It will be signed into law. It will go into law without the governor's signature, or the House and Senate will override a veto. This will become the law. The expansion of disability, which appears to be the problem that the governor has with the legislation, I want to say that again, the expansion of disability, people struggling with disabilities in our state having access to emergency shelter seems to be the problem. Will become the law. And people deserve to be prepared and remain sheltered while they have time to get that verification. The department has identified 457 or 458 we heard families or nearly 500 households who they think do not qualify under GA rules. They have not offered the emergency housing disability variance request form the form reference in the law. The form reference in the BA does not require a medical provider signature. It has been used before in 2021 and 2022. It is not ambiguous how the legislature decided to use this form. They know how to use it in the department. The legislation also does not require a medical provider. As you might imagine for many people experiencing homelessness, finding a medical provider would be a significant barrier. And for my clients, it certainly is. Furthermore, to require a licensed medical provider is an affront to the American with disabilities act, which is very clear that is not necessary that is not necessary for documentation of a disability. They are manufacturing a crisis as we heard, and then standing up inhumane congregate emergency shelters for only seven days that are also only at night, rather than extending people and giving them adequate time to get their disability form filled out. Further marginalizing people who are specifically afforded protections under the American with disabilities act. There is this is a crisis that both bodies in this building prevented the House and Senate. Clearly with clear language in the budget adjustment. The governor has staff who know and understand this legislation. There is no reason that he needs to learn about it after it gets to his desk. This legislation is not a surprise. Background conversations are had in these situations in which people within the administration often and in this case did agree to the language. One I already told you that one of three things will happen this bill visiting people on Friday, most of whom will likely qualify with a disability variance form without plenty of time to fill it out when they had time to roll this out as soon as it passed the legislature two Fridays ago. Moving people to an inhumane congregate shelter staffed by the National Guard with police security that is nighttime only for seven days is horrifying. It is treating our most vulnerable people in the state as if they are animals. We are shoving them off as if they don't even matter. The people that I know and work with every day are human beings. They are our neighbors, our community members. They are Vermonters that deserve respect. They are some of the most smart, wonderful people I have ever met and not a single one of them deserves to be treated like this. On Friday in the people that I work with, we know that at least from the people we have assessed so far, at least two who have recently had a leg amputated are on the list to be exited and will be unless we can find a medical provider in that time. We know that at least one person on oxygen will be exited if we can't find a medical provider. And these are just two of us so far. We know that several people with significant schizophrenia will be exited if we can't find a medical provider. And that's just a few examples of what we've found already. We also know just from our calls in the last two hours from my team, in those 20 calls, eight people were miscategorized, including three with children, three with SSDI, and two who had no cause evictions, and one who was fleeing domestic violence. That is just within the 20 of the people that were scheduled to be exited that we just called. Yet the department does not want to rescreen individuals despite the number of times that I have requested they do so based on finding these errors. This same thing happened in Act 81. The bottom line is that they are implementing this law in a way that not only creates a crisis, but that harms people with disabilities in Vermont, and that goes against the law that was passed, the bill that will be signed today and the intent of the legislation overall. The people who I work with, the people experiencing homelessness across our state deserve the dignity and the dignity was afforded to them by the legislature in both the House and Senate overwhelmingly. We do not live in a dictatorship and it is not the governor's to redictate a law that has already been created. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Rebecca Plummer and I'm a lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid. We are dismayed by the Department for Children and Families blatant disregard for people with disabilities and health conditions who are experiencing homelessness. As Brenda just said, and frankly for her, the legislature intended to protect people in this situation through the Budget Adjustment Act and it referred to a specific existing form that's been used before to be used to document a qualifying disability or health condition. The legislature approved the BAA nearly two weeks ago. Instead of reaching out to participants and informing them of these changes, instead of providing this form to people in emergency housing, the department has failed to implement the legislature's directive, failed to give notice to participants and delayed screening of people with disabilities or health conditions and caused confusion and improper denials. Because of their lack of proper notice, extremely vulnerable people will be kicked out of emergency housing on Friday. Heading into a weekend where temperatures in most of the state are not rising above the mid-40s. So to be clear, the adverse weather conditions period goes seasonally from December 15th to March 15th. Starting on March 15th, it changes to deciding from night to night whether there is going to be weather conditions that merit the imposition of exceptions for that night and that night only. This weekend, I looked at the weather predicted around the state. Most of the state has temperatures from the 30s to the mid to high 40s, low of the low mid 30s, high mid 40s, high 40s. There's also precipitation called for. None of that qualifies for a individual night adverse weather conditions exceptions. People will be exited onto the street or into these congregate mass congregate shelters that may be far from where they are come from. Because AUK is ending, AWC is ending and is not going to be in place even with weather conditions like I just described. Instead of proactively informing people about the upcoming changes and screening them, they send out a general notice to people, the department telling everyone that they have to leave on Friday. Not that they might still be eligible and they should check that out. Here's who they can call. Not that there's a form they can use to document their eligibility, just telling them that they have to leave on Friday and that while the legislature has proposed some other changes, they haven't been signed into law. People are scared and confused. We have clients who have called terrified about what is supposed to happen to them. And these are people with clear disabilities who simply have not been informed that they are not even in this group of people who has to prove additionally. And then there are all the people who do have to prove something additional and need time to fill out the form that was approved by the legislature. They need more information. So do motels, so do service providers. And we are calling on the department to delay the end of the adverse weather conditions period until it has properly assessed everyone. And given people with disabilities and medical conditions, clear notice and opportunity to submit the form designated by the legislature, which does not require a qualified medical provider, as the department is saying. This is, as everyone so far has said, a manufactured emergency. The General Assembly worked hard to avoid this situation. And the administration has ignored that directive and created an emergency that they're proposing to address in a completely inhumane manner. Vermonters deserve better. Good afternoon. Susan Aronoff, I do policy work with the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. And we at the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council are appalled at this turn of events. We commend the legislature for doing everything with its means to try to prevent being here at this terrible moment. And what I mean by this terrible moment is of those 500 people currently in hotels, many, maybe most, either have a disability that qualifies them to stay, and yet they haven't been afforded that. So they are, like, unnecessarily being traumatized with this idea that they have to be out within 48 or 72 hours. Or there are people with disabilities who are being given wrong information about what they need to do to establish that they have a disability. So people with disabilities are governed by a raft of laws. And a really challenging thing in the life of a person with a disability is figuring out which benefits they qualify for, which programs are eligible for, and how do you get into that, and how severe does your disability have to be, and when did it start? I worked for the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. We defined a developmental disability as a disability that had the age of onset before the developmental stage ended. Well, guess what? That's been a moving target, too. So throughout the lifespan, credit to grave of someone with a disability, it's a constant challenge to qualify what cradle to grave, whether that's special education, whether that's meals on wheels. Our service system is just so siloed, and it's really, really hard. There are people whose full time job is spent working with people to help them qualify for benefits, and then appealing their denials when they're denied, and then helping them maintain those benefits throughout their life. So now, here in Vermont, we are taking some of our most vulnerable citizens, and unnecessarily, because there is no legal requirement. I don't know how much more clear we can make this. We are taking people and telling them they have to prove that they're disabled enough to stay in a hotel, and in the meantime, oh, and they have to get a doctor's note to say so. And then while they're waiting for her to see a doctor, good luck getting into a doctor's office in Vermont these days. Do you know about the waiting list for University of Vermont own practices? It's been studied and documented. It's really hard. Good luck if you have transportation. Good luck if you have insurance. But, oh, you're just, you just need to get into a doctor's office to get a form signed. Yeah, I don't know how that's going to happen in Vermont. I really don't. But that is the challenge that we're now putting out in front of our most vulnerable citizens. People with disabilities who either qualify, people with disabilities who are now going to have to jump through a million hoops in cold weather, living on cots surrounded by people with guns in a congregate shelter. I really don't think this is how we intend as Vermonters to treat some of our most vulnerable citizens. I know it's not how the legislators who Vermonters have sent to represent them intended to treat our most vulnerable citizens. The Budget Adjustment Act is clear. People have a right to stay where they are and they have a right to stay if they have a disability and they can have a self-proving form provided to them by our state to do that. That's a simple thing to do. It has not been done. So let's start there, give people the information they need to qualify, and let's keep them safe and housed and warm and fed while we're figuring it out. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Ken Russell. I'm the director of Another Way in Montpil here. It's a drop-in center for folks with psychiatric disabilities. We do a lot of work with the unhoused population. We often catch people who fall through the cracks of our system and a crowbar is about to be taken to open up a bunch of cracks in that system and it's unnecessary. We, my staff, work so hard every day with really good people who are very vulnerable. There's a lot of danger. There's some people who are desperate. There are people who have substance abuse issues. There are people who are just down on their luck. And as I said, we're for folks with psychiatric disabilities. These are not like, pull yourself up by the bootstraps crowd. And that's what it feels like the governor wants. It's like, oh, we're just going to get everybody out onto the street, let the community soak this up, let the local people soak this up, let the elderly people in the church congregations who stand up shelters on an emergency basis take care of them. Let our community soak this up. And this is not who Vermont has become. And it doesn't work for everybody. The unhoused crisis is the crisis of housing economics. We all know what the price of things are for middle class yuppies moving up from New York or whatever. It's expensive for them. What about the folks who've been here a long time? What about the folks who are desperately showing up on a bus? But I have to say this, there's this myth out there. Well, these people come from somewhere else. Well, that's not true. They're maybe a handful, but they're a handful of Vermonters are going to other places too. Folks we deal with, I ask, where are you from? Oh, Barry. Well, my appeal, you're Berlin. My grandparents were here. My great grandparents were here. So people are really good at otherizing this population. They do it in conscious ways. They do it in unconscious ways. They're just kicking to the curb. It's like, and I know everybody's tired. People have been hit by the floods. And we're back in there. And I saw, I've seen it at meetings of people involved with these issues. People are tired. They put their hands up. We, you know, it's like Lucy in the football, Charlie Brown and Lucy in the football. Once again, there's this deadline and people are, like a year ago, convened a whole bunch of people in Washington County, the mayors and the town managers and the police and all the service providers. What are we going to do? We issued lists. Everybody got the freaking camping gear. By the way, here we are buying more camping gear again. And where are people going to go? This is not smart. This is not humane. And it's just this bad policy. So even if you're in your heart, you're like, I don't care about those people. For your self-interest, you should care about these people. It's that whole, you know, like unmet needs of other people. It's going to come back and affect you. It's going to affect you as you're walking down the street in Montpelier and there are people who are desperate. And they don't know where to go either. It's going to affect legislators when they're going to lunch. It's like they're going to see the results of this. So it's up to people in this building. It's up to this guy over here to figure out how to be smart and innovative and come up with solutions and not quietly make bad decisions. And this whole thing about getting letters at the last minute, I know these people like, you know, Brenda was talking, it's like, these are wonderful people. They get these letters. Now what is this? And talk about resigned and desperate. Do we have enough heart? Do we have enough love? Do we have enough brains? Do we have enough commitment to treat these other people with dignity? To keep our communities together, to stay true like we are a state, we are communities that care about everybody and are smart enough to figure out how to make it all work. Thank you. Actually one more thing. Sorry. We have a wall in another way. It's a butcher paper wall. People write the names of people who have died. There are dozens and dozens of people who are friends of the people I see and work with and laugh with and sing with every day who have died over the last two, three years. It's heartbreaking. They'll come in and they'll put somebody's name on the wall and people are in tears. These are real people. These are not statistics. Thank you. Thank you. Happy to take any questions? Yeah, so a few minutes ago in the governor's press conference, I asked him for details on this congregant shelter plan that you've known a couple of times. He refused to give any and so I'm wondering if you could just spell out just where this information is exactly. It was just, um, Commissioner Winters just presented it in House Human Services, so you can find it there and I, you can give the details on what it is exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so as of now what we know is there's going to be four Burlington, Bennington, Rutland, and Berlin. They're going to be congregate, set up with cots. I think it's still unclear who is going to be overseen it. It sounds like possibly AHS staff, possibly National Guard, and, um, um, and then quote-unquote security from local law enforcement who will be armed, as they always are. Um, we've heard that it might be 150 person beds or 150 person units, um, but again this is just what we've heard from various folks, um, but we've heard, I think the bigger issue is the questions we haven't heard. You know, we are exiting potentially forward. We've heard 458 households who are scattered across Vermont to four centralized places. So how are folks going to get there? How are they going to continue with their employment? If they have kids, how are their kids going to stay in educational institutions? Um, all these questions have not been addressed. Um, so I think the bigger question from our perspective is there's so many outstanding things that in this never, this didn't need to happen yet. We have a system in place right now. We have a hotel and motel system. We had a BAA that foresaw that, that protected to ensure that people could stay housed through June 30th and we're just creating this crisis instead. And I think it's really clear that there's an answer to this problem, which is to extend people's vouchers at least for a week or two weeks so that they have time to address this and to end to follow the intent of the legislature and, um, make sure that the form does not require a medical provider because there are lots of providers who could get through these forms with people who they have intimate knowledge of their disability. So that was the intent of the legislature and that is a huge step forward for the American with Disabilities Act and for the, for Monters. So that is an easy solution. We're spent, we're going to spend money on these temporary shelters instead of having dignity for people. So it is very simple for us to actually do that and create a lot better outcome for individuals. And this, that's what the legislature did in their law. So this is, this is a time when, um, we should follow the law. I just want to note that Commissioner Winters did confirm in his testimony to House Human Services that these shelters will be, um, 7 a.m. 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., like 9 p.m. only and people will be exited during the day and, you know, who knows where they're going to be, but people with disabilities, people with oxygen, people with whatever their needs are just literally on the streets. These are going to be open for 7 days. Yeah, so they said, he said, um, he said 7 to 10 days, probably 7 days is what he said. And so, um, there is, this is also just, it's a feel-good measure, like I'm doing something to help these individuals. I don't know what fantasy they're, like, there's no reality where in 7 days we're going to figure out what to do about the housing crisis. This is not a solution. This is just spending, just throwing money and to pat or to pat, to pat oneself on the back while a lot of people suffer. The world's worst feel-good measure. It is, um, it's certainly not making me feel very good and it's, I don't think it's making any of the people that we work with feel very good. This is a, um, there is a, we've been working as fast as we can to get people to disability variance form and it is possible in Rutland, um, in the last week, we've identified, um, a lot of people, but so far we've gotten 18 people who we've identified a primary care physician. They did not have one before and had the form filled out by the primary care physician. So it is possible for us to actually do this, um, in not using just medical providers, but if they're stuck on that for this interim time, that's even possible, but we have to, we have to give time to get these forms filled out and that is, like I keep saying, that was the intent of the legislature and so if they gave us the tool, so I keep saying this, there is a lot of really hard-working providers and individuals and advocates in this state who are willing to help get implement this law and we are not included in or asked to or part of the solution and therefore people get let people fall through these cracks or this gaping holes that we're now creating when we could actually use the advocacy and support of the people who have direct connections to all these individuals to make sure that they have time to get these forms filled out because I do, it's not that we don't have a problem with the form, we have been fighting, many of us have been fighting to have this disability variance request form used for years, this is a huge forward movement, um, but I do have a problem with the requirement of the form being used as a tool to exit people who are experiencing disabilities or living with disabilities. That is just an egregious misuse of power. I just want to paint a picture of what it looks like when people do fall through the cracks and this gentleman said I could talk about his story and Brenda made reference to him. A person who lost his leg last year, um, trying to cross a train by Shaw's and Montpelier, he's in a wheelchair with only one leg and he has been bounced from facility to facility. It was in the cold of the winter. I know he's on this list who's about to be exited. We struggled to get him indoors when it was 10 degrees outside. One night when it was 10 degrees outside I made the choice as executive director to let him camp on our porch at another way which is a liability issue for us because I figured that's the safest place he could be right now and whatever the consequences are I will deal with it. When people and there are people who come through with mental health challenges who may have bounced from hospital to hospital for two months involving service providers all over the state because it's amazing. It's a testament to the heart and soul of these service providers that they show up committed to these human beings and they'll make the phone calls and figure out who do I call. I know somebody in Bennington, I'll call them. There's a network there that turns out but everybody's like working with a system that's turned upside down. Only the state has the capacity, the scale, to deal in a structural way to address some of these cracks in the system. Right now they're going the wrong direction and there's going to be cost paid again by the folks in the churches, by the police departments, by the downtown merchants, by families, by everybody. So it's really important and Brenda's great at galvanizing on this issue to wake up to what's actually happening. People fall asleep in meetings. I mean they're just like they're like in a zone and it's like okay here's our agenda we're going through our agenda and it's like it's just really important to wake up to what's really going on. I want to just tell you really quickly if that's okay with everybody. When somebody is denied emergency housing the first step that we take at homelessness Vermont is and people can reach out to us at and homelessnessvt at gmail.com and we'll put our phone number and flyers back up on our on my pages and get them out there. But when somebody is denied emergency housing I and my colleagues do a usually do a 40-minute interview with them to learn more about their story and figure out what's happening. So the individuals that I work with I know who they are, where they came from and why they're experiencing what they're experiencing. We build relationships with them. Then we go through a very arduous sometimes process of getting the department to accept their qualifications because we do more carving out of people who experience homelessness than we do accepting them in to the programs out of some fear that all these individuals are going to take advantage of this system. Every individual I work with needs and deserves the emergency housing that they eventually get. And then if we can't succeed that way we go to a fair hearing process. Sometimes Vermont legal aid takes on and represents people in fair hearings and sometimes I take on and represent people in fair hearings. When we look at what how this has been administered and what the governor has done here I want to be really clear that we're harming people, we're harming communities, but also providers who are drowning trying to support people drowning trying to support people feel like the lid is being closed on a bucket of water that they're in. They are getting stuck. We know, we know at an homeless Vermont because we help people through the process of achieving and maintaining vouchers. We know that during adverse weather people often come in through a screenless door. They are not screened. Instead of taking the people, the individuals that they don't think meet GA qualifications and putting them back out in the hallway not officially outside though I want to be clear, but making sure that we bring them back through the screen door so we're sure that they didn't meet GA categorical eligibility. I mean that's the first step, right? You'd think that would have started weeks ago when we knew this was going to happen, but it didn't. So it's not just this disability variance form, but it's also the number of people who are being miscategorized and the refusal to contact them and re-screen every single one of them. Because I'll give you an example. We talked to someone the other day who said, well I came in during adverse weather and then we asked them, do you have SSI? Do you have SSTI? Do you have children? Do you? We asked them all the questions, all the qualifying factors. We're not making things up. All the qualifying factors. And they said, well I had a no-cause eviction. And I said, oh, does the department have your paperwork? And they said, well no, because I came in during adverse weather. So they said I could just come in as AWC. So that means this person does meet categorical eligibility, but they never were screened for it. Or even if they were screened for it, the simpler tool was to bring them in through the screenless door. So I want to be really clear that there are lots of ways that we are mismanaging this crisis right now and very simple ways that it could have been done in a way that would have been successful for the people who are in this program and tenable for the providers who are trying to help them. But the way that it was done, this ain't it. Any other questions? Well thank you all so much for coming, appreciate it, and please reach out if you have any additional questions as this continues. Thanks.